


Like a match in a forest fire

by dwellingondreams



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Adam Needs Therapy, Adam's Catholic Guilt, Angst, But Bad At It, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sex, Miscommunication, One Shot, Or not, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Undercover, Undercover Missions, Undercover as Married, Undercover as a Couple, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27430480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered/if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do." - Annelyse Gelman, 'The Pillowcase'.Judging by the look on his face, Kamala assumes he did in fact find something sinister, and braces herself. What could it have been? A message written in blood? Severed body parts? Bedbugs?“There’s only one bed,” he says, grimly.“Well, we are registered here as a married couple,” she ventures.(On what ought to be a very low-key recon mission to an oceanside resort, the Detective and a particularly surly vampire spend more time investigating one another than their surroundings.)
Relationships: Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	Like a match in a forest fire

By the time her phone’s maps app chimes cheerily to let her know she’s reached her destination, Kamala decides to offer a collective thanks to every iteration of God she can think of, because her engine developed a low but problematic whine about ten miles back, the hatchback’s always faltering air conditioning lasted about forty minutes into the three hour drive, and she’s not sure her singing along to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” has done to much to improve Adam’s mood. 

Hunched over in her admittedly cramped passenger seat, he’s been alternating between staring broodily out the window and giving her the occasional sidelong stare of ‘are you really singing aloud to this song for the fifth time in an hour’ and ‘I can’t believe I agreed to this, we should have sent Nate instead’. Even for him, this is very quiet, but she’s been too busy making sure they’re not actually lost on unfamiliar roads to worry much over it. 

Beyond that, despite this region’s reputation for cool and rainy summers, the heat has steadily cranked its way up to a truly sweltering number, and once she pulls off the highway and they lose the wind, Kamala becomes painfully aware of just how hot it is. Her cheap cotton sundress, worn more so for comfort during a long car ride than for style, since it was bought off the bargain rack and looks it, is bunched up perilously close to her hips, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he had to peel himself out of the passenger seat, it’s so hot in this car. At least she doesn’t have leather upholstering.

“Next time,” he says- Adam has made exactly four comments over the span of the past three hours, no more, no less, all related to her driving, the amount of luggage she’s brought with her, or her singing- “we are taking an Agency vehicle.”

“Of course,” Kamala fights to keep a straight face as she pulls up to the security gate of the resort. “Because that wouldn’t look suspicious in the least, us cruising up in a giant black SUV.”

“They have other cars available for official use,” he says curtly, but is cut off by the smiling attendant eager to welcome the ‘vacationers’ to their happy home for the next week- forty acres of rustic woodland, beach, and bay, perfecting for boating, hiking, or romantic walks into the sunset. Well, the last bit was Kamala’s own invention, but it’s not as if she picked this place. 

Adam disagrees, predictably, when she comments as much as she pulls onto the gravel road leading into the resort proper, flanked by tall pines and the smell of the sea, carried on the breeze, which is the only thing making the oppressive heat any more bearable. 

“It would be in their best interests to put on a cheerful front,” he states, then frowns skeptically as the engine whines yet again. “Are you sure this vehicle is going to make it to our final destination?”

Kamala presses her lips together, then says, as diplomatically as possible (which is not very, because after three hours in a car with anyone, patience wears thin), “Well, if we do break down, you can just get out and push us along, right?”

He looks appalled for a moment, then catches onto her joke and rolls his eyes. “Very funny.”

“Well, you were pretty eager to show off your… tree hurling skills that one time-,”

“It was what was required in that specific set of circumstances,” he says, though his mouth is twitching slightly. She's come to realize that half the time when he seems to have missed a joke or pun, it's because he just doesn't want to engage. The more he retorts or even cracks snide comments of his own, the more invested he is. 

Kamala can’t resist. “Really? Because it seems to me like you could have just… you know, pulled it a little out of the way-,”

“As there are no felled trees blocking our path at present, I fail to see how that is relevant now.”

Just for that snide remark, she turns the radio back on, and heralds them into the small lot outside the main lodge with a welcome heaping of Dolly Parton. She’s still not sure what music Adam listens to in his spare time. Gregorian chanting? Opera? No, that seems more like a Nate thing. Who knows, maybe he likes show tunes. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about him.

She’s not sure why that thought stings quite so much.

He seems relieved enough to finally get the chance to stretch his legs, and troops after her across the lot, up a flight of rickety white porch stairs, and into the old Victorian house that serves as the resort’s restaurant and front desk. Kamala is used to taking the lead in any missions that involve a good deal of face to face contact with… ‘civilians’, she’s supposed to call them now, like she’s suddenly some sort of Special Forces operative. 

But she is glad that Adam at least trusts her enough now to not constantly step on her toes or talk over her in situations like this. He’s content enough to loom behind her, probably putting on what he thinks is a neutral, composed expression, but really just looks like a very tall buff bloke in sunglasses working out a difficult math problem in his head. 

Nonetheless, his composure does crack slightly when the receptionist cheerfully sends them off with an, “Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Batra!”

He waits until they’re back outside to light into her, but Kamala would be lying through her teeth if she didn’t get a certain thrill from the way he tugs insistently on her arm to pull her up short. He’s really being incredibly gentle; she is a very small woman compared to most people in general, not just him, and he could easily yank her off her feet if he wasn’t so careful. 

“Why did the receptionist seem to be operating under the delusion that we are married?” he asks, and she can tell he is struggling to keep his tone even and faux-calm. His face is slightly red, marring his usually pristinely pale skin. She likes how he looks when he’s all flustered. It puts some color in those pasty cheeks. 

“It was the most convenient way to make the arrangements,” Kamala answers, the very picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Besides, it’s not like we haven’t pretended to be a couple before for the sake of our objectives. You know, there are many psychological studies that indicate that people are more trusting and accepting of a couple they know is married-,”

“That’s fine,” he says, too quickly, then holds his hand out for their room key. “Did they label where we’re staying on the map?”

Their room really turns out to be its own small cottage, along a winding gravel road dotted with other cottages and bungalows, all facing out onto the expansive harbor, shimmering blue in the late afternoon sunlight through the trees. Kamala wouldn’t say she’s ever been the most outdoorsy of person, not after that disastrous camping trip she and Tina took the summer before their first year of university, but it’s not like they’re roughing it, and she wouldn’t have stayed in Wayhaven in the first place if she didn’t enjoy some peace and quiet. 

Or, used to enjoy some peace and quiet, that is, before she became a magnetic force pulling in everything weird, sinister, or downright freaky in the area. But most days, thankfully, she’d say things are still pretty peaceful. As peaceful as they can be, given who her coworkers are. 

She and Adam lug their things into the cottage after unlocking the front door. Precisely, Kamala lugs in her things, since it takes her two trips- you can never be sure about the weather here, and so she had to bring short sleeves and some jeans and sweatshirts too, just in case it takes a drastic turn for the cool and rainy- while Adam traverses the small space, she assumes checking for any hidden dangers- monsters in closets, demons in mirrors, spy cameras bugging up their rooms, that sort of thing. 

Kamala has never liked horror films much, which is sort of ironic, considering the turn her life has taken. She thinks she’d do pretty well with keeping her cool in one, at this rate. 

Finally, he comes back to the small wood-paneled foyer, which leads into the tiny kitchenette- really not much bigger than her flat’s kitchen- and the equally small but cozy sitting room, which has glass-paneled doors looking out onto the water, a spectacular view, really. Judging by the look on his face, Kamala assumes he did in fact find something sinister, and braces herself. What could it have been? A message written in blood? Severed body parts? Bedbugs? 

“There’s only one bed,” he says, grimly.

“Well, we are registered here as a married couple,” she ventures. 

“I assumed there would be a pullout.”

She has no idea why he assumed that, but isn’t about to point it out and provoke an argument right off the bat. To be honest, she thinks they both deserve some praise for keeping their cool with one another during the long car ride up here. 

He can still be condescending, domineering, and stubborn, even when he’s not fully aware of how abrasive he comes across as. She can still be indecisive, emotional, and overly accepting, too willing to avoid any confrontation rather than get to the bottom of things.

But funnily enough, she’s never shied away from confrontation with Adam. When she and Bobby were together- not that she and Adam are together, not that there is any comparison between him and Bobby- but when she and Bobby were together, perish the thought, they almost never fought beyond the occasional petty argument, not because Kamala was so happy and content with him (she wasn’t), but because she was so desperate to avoid a serious fight. Bobby was her first ‘real’ boyfriend, her first long term relationship, and she was terrified of ruining what they had. 

Even when what they had wasn’t very good. Even when it was a bit shit, actually. 

She kept her mouth shut and didn’t speak up for herself and they carried on like that, him either blissfully unaware of her growing resentment, or all too aware and simply relieved she didn’t have the nerve to say anything to his face, and her growing more and more frustrated and disheartened until she couldn’t take it anymore and they had the blow-out fight to end all fights, conveniently right around the same time Bobby almost got them both expelled after copying not one but two of her term papers from the year before. 

But she shouldn’t be thinking about any of that right now, because it’s really not relevant.

Kamala puts down her bags with a sigh, and moves past him to check the bedroom. It’s larger than her bedroom in her flat, which is not saying much, but it looks clean and tidy, most of the space taken up by the king size bed. Big as he is and small as she is, they could both easily fit, but she’s also not that naïve. It’s not a good idea. 

She turns back, only to find him alarmingly close, right behind her. Kamala almost collides with his chest, then they both back up at the same time, exhaling. 

“There’s a sofa in the sitting room,” she says. “You take the bed, I’ll sleep there.”

His brow furrows. “You should take the bed, I’ll take the sofa.”

“Adam, you won’t fit on the sofa,” she says, struggling not to roll her eyes. 

“I cannot leave you exposed to intruders in the sitting room while I take the bedroom. Besides, this is a completely illogical line of reasoning to begin with. I don’t need to sleep. I can stay up for days at a time.”

“Right, well, you do still need some semblance of privacy,” Kamala says firmly. “We’ve tried the you-stay-up-for-hours-on-end-guarding-my-every-move thing before, remember? You wind up an anxious mess and I wind up wanting to throttle you.”

“Privacy is irrelevant in this context,” he points out, then adds, with a defensive edge, “And I’m not an anxious person.”

She sighs. “Fine. We’ll just… assign ourselves separate sides of this room. I’ll sleep in the bed when I need to, and you can… do whatever you like with your time while I’m doing that.”

“I will be here,” he says, as if it should be obvious. “It would be incredibly reckless of me to leave you vulnerable to attack.”

“I did bring my gun, you know,” she says crossly, though it’s not as if she’s going to be wearing it on her hip every day, since she’s undercover and can’t exactly hide a firearm under sundresses and swimsuits. “And I can defend myself.”

“I made certain of that.” For the first time a note of smugness creeps into his crisp tone. 

Kamala feels her lips tug into an inadvertent smile, which he seems pleased with in his usual secretive sort of way. “We should unpack and then scout the place out, okay?”

She hops into the shower while he busies himself with methodically arranging his clothes in one of the chests of drawers; she feels like a sweaty, grimy mess after that long, hot drive up here, and she is still vain enough to not want him to see her traipsing around through the woods looking like that. That’s one thing they have in common, she thinks with a wry edge, remembering the memorable visit to the sewers.

She can’t exactly tell him, but whatever cologne he uses, she really likes it. Maybe it dates back to the Crusades or something. Some bottle of holy oil he pilfered. That does get a sputtering, incredulous laugh out of her as she steps out of the shower, wringing out her hair before tying it up with a towel. Caught up in her thoughts and not really thinking about much else, she steps as casually out of the bathroom as she would by herself at home, wearing nothing but the towel on her head and the one wrapped around her torso, held in place by a loop under her arm. 

Kamala shuts the door behind her, then blinks in surprise, realizing once again just how small this bedroom is, and how close he is to her, even standing stiffly on the other side of the bed. 

Staring. Adam has this way of staring that is not offensive nor even comic but rather looks as though he’d been transformed into some kind of marble statue of a Roman soldier, frozen in time, eyes wide before the oncoming invasion roaring down from the hills.

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, she tells herself, firmly, and moves over to her half-unpacked bag, rifling through her things for her comb and the clothes she wants to change into.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” he says, somewhat hoarsely, as if he’s suddenly developed a head cold. She nods without looking up, and listens to him go, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Feels a sudden and unfair flash of anger. What did she want him to do, leer at her? She’s got to stop acting like a child. He’s made it very clear where he stands- okay, no, he hasn’t, but he is trying, at least- and it is inappropriate of her to get upset with him for not… for not wanting exactly what she would want. It’s just-

She doesn’t know. Bobby was her first, to her eternal regret- it’s not that sex with him was terrible, but she was an insecure nineteen year old and though she doesn’t feel as if he pressured or coerced her into anything she didn’t actually want to do, she does feel as though she was quick to jump into it purely because she liked him a lot and was afraid he would lose interest in her if she wasn’t ‘fun enough’ for him. Like she needed to prove herself. It’s ridiculous. 

And then after the Bobby fiasco, she really, genuinely swore it off for a good while- she’s never been interested in hookups, and she was really far too busy while she was still in school to date much- and then after she graduated and came back to Wayhaven she had two long-distance relationships, both of which petered off fairly naturally.

Then she proceeded to get roped into investigating a serial killer, was abducted by said serial killer, rescued herself from said serial killer who was in fact a vampire dimension hopper turned mad scientist, discovered she was an actual mutant, like something out of a comic book, became close friends with her vampire coworkers, developed intense feelings for the most prickly of said coworkers, and one very odd night, proceeded to fall into bed with said coworker.

The point is, this is not the way things were supposed to go. They were supposed to have a long run of ‘will they or won’t they’ first. 

Well, they have. They did. And it went about as badly as one might expect. Not the sex bit, that was actually quite lovely, but the after-the-sex bit, whereupon he fell short of a full-fledged mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa self-flagellating routine, but came awfully close to it. 

She’s not made of stone. Of course it stung. It stung terribly. 

And she can’t even be angry with him for it, because that would make her a horrible, selfish person. He can’t help how he feels, how much he obviously regrets what happened, and there was nothing she could have said that would have magically fixed things between them.

What was she going to say, really?

Well, he said, “We never should have done this.” and “You should go home.” and Kamala had struggled not to cry, collected her things, and dressed in silence on one side of the bed, eyes watering and lower lip trembling like a toddler, while he sat naked on the other side of the bed, his head in his hands, looking as though he’d just watched a horrible natural disaster on television- a catastrophic earthquake or forest fire, a tsunami. The muscles in his shoulders had stood out in that moment like cords and she’d had a terrible sensation of wanting to crash into the weight of him, like a wave hitting the cliffs, like she could tear down the wall just as quickly as he was building it. 

She couldn’t, of course. 

And after a few very awkward and tense days, during which Farah had made many speculations, some of them uncomfortably accurate, Morgan had been in a very foul mood, even for her, and Nate had kept looking between the two of them like a worried parent, Kamala thinks she and Adam simply came to the mutual, mature conclusion to pretend it had never happened and pick up where they left off. 

It’s for the best. They… got it out of their systems. It’s over and done with, it won’t ever happen again. He’s made that perfectly clear, and she’s accepted it. Really. She has.

After she’s changed, they take their scouting walk. Kamala feels oddly vulnerable, trekking around in canvas slip-ons and a sundress, as opposed to her usual slightly more polished outfits she’d wear into work, but at this point it’s not as though it would be embarrassing to her, since he’s seen her in just about every state of dress, from her work clothes to her pyjamas to sweatpants and a tee shirt lounging about her flat to, well, not much at all. 

But the less said about that the better. They don’t say much to one another, and it takes them over a half hour to do a full loop of the resort, not counting the hiking and biking trails, which Adam could cover himself in a matter of minutes tonight, when he’s not likely to be spotted racing through the woods. 

Kamala has only ever seen vampires (and werewolves) sprinting, not an endurance run, and wonders what that looks like. Do they still have to stop and catch their breath, albeit much more infrequently than humans, or are they just like the Energizer Bunny? The thought makes her chuckle to herself as they come back out onto the rocky but tranquil beach looking across the crystal clear bay. The waters look calm and peaceful right now, a few boats trolling around fishing or simply enjoying the last hours of daylight.

“So I guess swimming is out, then,” she says, glancing up at Adam.

“I don’t see the point in tempting fate, unless you have a plan for how you, a human who cannot breathe underwater, are going to subdue a dangerous magical creature, possibly sentient, intent on murdering tourists,” Adam replies sardonically. 

Kamala makes a little face at him, then nudges him with her elbow and sighs. “Well, we might as well hang around here for a while and keep an eye on things, right?”

“This is a reconnaissance mission, we are supposed to alert the Agency once we have visuals on the subject so they can send in a team of operatives trained for precisely this,” he recites, as if from memory, but sits down in one of the Adirondack chairs besides her as Kamala stretches out, kicking off her shoes. 

“Right,” she yawns, tired from the drive and the sun. “Are they mermaids?”

“What?”

“Well, Unit Bravo are vampires, and Unit Alpha are werewolves. So is Unit Charlie, or Delta, or whichever one they are… mermaids? Or… selkies?” 

He snorts. “They’re… most comfortable around large bodies of water.”

Kamala can’t think of any other water-related magical beings. She yawns again, crossing her legs and burying her toes in the warm sand. In contrast to her slouched position, Adam is on the edge of his seat alert, as if he had binoculars in hand; not that he needs them. Kamala’s not sure exactly how powerful his sight is, but he’s regularly recognized her face from the opposite end of a busy street, and he seems to have no difficulties picking people out of crowds, even in shopping malls or stadiums. 

At some point the faint birdsong, the rushing of the wind in the trees, and the gentle crush of the waves lapping up against the beach lull her into a doze, once she isn’t entirely aware of until Adam gently shakes her awake. “The sun’s starting to go down,” he says. “There’s no one left in the water. You should go back to the room and rest. I’ll keep watch.”

“We can’t just-,” she yawns again, “watch the water the entire time, Adam, we’ll go mad. Besides,” she says blearily as she stands up, very conscious of how he braces her using one hand firmly on her upper back, large enough to, it feels to her, completely envelop her shoulder blades, “I made us dinner reservations.”

He exhales. “You made us dinner reservations.”

“We’d attract more attention if we stayed cooped up in the cottage every night, it’s a resort,” she says, rubbing at her eyes and blinking up at him. He’s not scowling, which she takes for a good sign, though he doesn’t seem thrilled, either. Then again, when does Adam ever seem thrilled, except when Farah is pushing Nate’s buttons for once, instead of his? 

There’s no point in changing again for dinner, so she just trades in her canvas shoes for a more dressy pair of sandals, and reiterates to Adam that no one expects him to wear a suit jacket and dress trousers. 

The restaurant itself is busy but not crowded, and Kamala smiles politely as the hostess leads them to a table on the back deck overlooking the water. Adam pulls out her chair for her, prompting a bemused grin on her part, and he sighs, put-upon, when she retaliates by pouring his water for him. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m not going to order any drinks. Or dessert. Strictly business.”

He regards her flatly; sunglasses tucked into the collar of his shirt. In the dusk light, his eyes really are a brilliant shade of jade green. “Maybe dessert,” she acknowledges. 

A slight smile tugs at his lips before he composes himself, though really, she thinks, he should probably be smiling a bit more, given that their cover is that of a happily married couple, not a increasingly-contemplating-divorce couple. 

After they’ve placed their orders, he frowns down at her hands. Kamala wonders for a moment if he’s disapproving of her table manners, and removes her elbows from the glass tabletop, then realizing he’s looking at her fingers. “What’s wrong?” she wriggles them at him. 

“You don’t have a ring,” he says in a low tone.

Kamala wrinkles her nose at him; she likes jewelry and wears rings plenty of times, but she didn’t want to risk losing any of her favorite ones today. “What do you- oh.” Now she understands. He’s talking about a wedding ring. 

To her surprise, he seems genuinely concerned over it. “People will think it’s odd that you’re not wearing one.”

“No, they won’t,” Kamala says dismissively. The diners around them are chatting, oblivious, heads bent together. She feels a stab of jealousy, watching one woman hold her wife’s hand under the table. “For all they know I’ve been swimming all day. And loads of women don’t wear their engagement or wedding rings in the summer when their hands might swell.”

“You would,” he says.

She frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, if you were married to someone, you would always wear your rings,” he says. 

She wants to tell him that’s a bit presumptuous, but he’s right. She would. When she dated Bobby he gave her this necklace- it wasn’t at all to her taste, but it was expensive, she will give Bobby that, he was a horrible boyfriend but he certainly wasn’t a cheap one, he always got her very high-end, top of the line presents for her birthday and anniversaries, the problem was it was never anything she actually liked.

All that to say, she wore that stupid necklace every day, despite it not being to her taste at all, up until they broke up. She felt like it mattered to him, and made him happy, so it seemed a small sacrifice to wear it. Now she rolls her eyes at her younger self, but- yes, if she was hypothetically in love with someone enough to marry them, she would wear her wedding band everywhere she went, no matter the weather or occasion. Her mum still wears hers. 

“Well, no one has to know that,” she says. “We can be Kami and Adam, a very modern couple who don’t believe in silly things like that. We don’t wear wedding bands-,”

“I would,” he says, gravely. Kamala is not sure if it’s because Adam was born and raised in a time period where marriage was… a very big deal in many sorts of ways, or if it’s just who he is as a person. But she believes him. He’s never been someone who gives his word lightly, just like the rest of Unit Bravo. If they say they’re going to do something, they’ll do it. She trusts all of them with her life. 

“You would,” she says. “But Adam Batra might not.”

His lips thin in displeasure. Kamala grins, only breaking off to thank the waiter for bringing them some bread. “Oh, you don’t like that, do you?” She breaks off a piece of bread and offers some to him; he shakes his head, so she pops it in her mouth, and adds, a bit goadingly, she’ll admit, “Positively medieval of you, if you ask me-,”

“It has nothing to do with that,” he interrupts, then flushes, picking up a piece of bread himself. Kamala offers him some butter on the end of her knife but he shakes his head again. “I would just prefer to keep my own name, is all. It means something to me. I’m the only Du Mortain left.”

She feels a thud of guilt, and cringes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-,”

“It’s fine,” he says, after swallowing his mouthful of bread. He always eats fast, as if his plate might be ripped away at any moment, and chews very mechanically. “I’ve had a long time to get used to that fact.”

“Well, I’ve been Detective Batra too long to give that up, either,” she smiles, then closes her eyes. “This bread is so good.”

“If you keep eating it, you won’t have any room for your dinner,” he reminds her. Adam sometimes takes unusual interest in her eating habits, not out of a desire to tell her what she can and can’t eat, but because she thinks it genuinely interests him, as someone who does not need to consume anything but blood, and who seldom eats ‘real food’ as a result of that. Well, except around her. She’s always eating or trying to get him to try something. 

“That’s what leftovers are for,” she says, opening her eyes again.

He is smiling that peculiar, almost shy smile he does when he thinks she won’t notice. It’s gone as quickly as it’s appeared. 

After a fairly uneventful dinner, besides her insisting they swap plates at one point so she can try some of his swordfish and force him to attempt some of her pasta, they walk back through the dark towards their cottage, Kamala still licking at the complimentary shaved cherry ice they gave them in paper cups before she left. He didn’t want his, so she’s double-timing them, alternating crunches of cherry and lime. Adam is watchful and cautious, though she knows his senses are only heightened in the dark, and she is more alert than her body language would suggest, learning casually on his arm and playing the part of the oblivious tourist, but scanning the tree line and the road. 

But they don’t see or hear anything suspicious beyond the distant crackle of fireworks over the harbor, and reach the cottage without incident. The porch light is glowing a cheery yellow, to Kamala’s delight; she loves her flat, really, she does, but it’s never quite as homey as she’d like it to be, certainly not from the outside, no matter how many decorate wreaths or welcome mats she impulse buys online. She unlocks the door and lets them both in, then raises an eyebrow at the way he’s staring at her.

“Your mouth is very red,” he says. 

Kamala grins around her stained lips, though her lips are prickling the longer he looks at them. “Just a consequence of eating well.”

“I don’t think you would enjoy life as a vampire very much,” he says, almost jokingly.

“I have too many foods to try first. I’ve a whole world tour of cuisines to complete,” she says, tossing her now empty cups in the rubbish bin. “Do you know I’ve never even left the country? Mum was never one for vacations.”

“But you know many languages,” he says, following her into the sitting room as she flicks on the lamp. 

“Well, that’s the internet for you. Besides, Mum made me learn Punjabi, because she felt guilty about never keeping up with it as a kid. So I didn’t have a choice for that one, and then I took Italian in high school and Italian and Spanish in college… oh, and French with Tina, she was in the French Cultural Club… I only ever really get to practice the Punjabi with Verda, though, and he makes me sound like a total child…” she trails off. “What?”

“Nothing,” says Adam, face half-shadowed by the warm lighting. “You’re a very impressive person.”

It’s a very neutral sort of compliment but his tone is anything but. Kamala stays where she is, quiet, then offers, “So are you. And you’ve had about nine times as much life to… be impressive.”

“I’ve had nine times as much life to make mistakes,” he says. “You’ve had no such guarantees.”

Kamala huffs gently. “Are you actually admitting you find something about humans admirable?”

He pauses, then steps a little closer to her, looking genuinely contrite. “If my- I made those comments about- about humanity out of spite. And bitterness. If you… if you’ve ever felt that I- that I look down on you, or think you inferior, you… you would be very mistaken.”

His face is no longer shadowed to her. She needs to say goodnight and get ready for bed. This is not the time or the place to be getting dragged into some philosophical discussion about the nature of humanity and who has done more with their life. 

“I don’t think you look down on me,” she says, softly. “I think you-,” she stops herself just in time, and glances away.

“I what?” he presses. 

Kamala says nothing, slipping off her shoes instead; she shouldn’t be tracking dirt on the floors like this, they seem freshly polished. 

“Kamala,” he says, and to her shock, his hand lands on her shoulder.

She glances back up at him. Too close, she thinks, dismally. Too close to brush this one off. The green of his eyes in much darker now, the lines of his face softer.

“I think you respect me and you like me as a person,” she says, defeated. “But I know I’ve made your life difficult, and I feel badly about that.”

His brow furrows. “Difficult?”

“Yes,” she says. “You… I feel like you were going along quite peaceful, nine hundred years of quiet contemplation and saving lives and all that, and then I got dumped in your lap-,” phrasing, she thinks, but it’s far too late now, “and… and of course we’re friends now and I love spending time with you- with you and the rest of the unit, but I know you… what we- well, I am sorry about what happened.”

He removes his hand from her shoulder as if slapped, looking stricken. She feels another wave of guilt surge up her throat. This was a terrible move on her part, dredging that up, but in her defense, he did start this line of thought by apologizing. She’s a compulsive apologizer when it comes to emotions and friends and love. Love of one’s friends, she tells herself. She feels love for him the same way she does Tina or Morgan or Nate or Farah. She wants him to be safe and happy because she has great affection for him as her friend, in the most platonic sense. She is not going to continue to delude herself into this stupid, one-sided delusion that they could be anything else. Sometimes friends do things together and decide not to do them again, it’s not a big deal, she will get over it. 

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, and she winces. Is she really going to have to spell it out? But he doesn’t look upset with her, more so with himself, and she can’t stand to see it. She only wants him looking so sorry when he’s actually done something he deserves to feel contrite over. Self-loathing never got anything done, as her mum would say in that brisk, crisp tone of her. 

“For what happened two months ago,” she says, voice barely above a mutter. She forces herself to look him in the eyes. They are both adults, she is not going to act like a mortified teenager. “Seeing you- knowing you felt so badly afterwards, I… I never want to see you like that again, and… and I’m sorry I didn’t- I’m sorry that happened, if I’d known you’d regret it so much, I would never have-,”

“I don’t regret it,” he says, voice hoarse again, the mysterious head cold back.

Kamala freezes up, literally, a belated brain-chill that sends shivers ricocheting down her spine. “You- what?”

“I don’t regret it,” he says. “I- that’s why it can’t… we can’t… You need to understand, Kamala, that it had- it had nothing to do with you, and-,”

“No, wait,” she snaps, feeling heat rise in her face. “You- I thought- Adam, you told me to leave straight away! You said we never should have done it!” ‘Done it’. How old is she, sixteen? “We slept together,” she says rawly, “and I- well, I thought it was pretty nice, actually, but you- I mean, you acted like you’d hated it, or- you seemed so ashamed-,”

“I am ashamed that I don't regret it more,” he retorts, then seems to crumple slightly at the horrified look on her face. “I- Kamala, I am not ashamed of you, it’s just- we can’t. We can’t,” now he sounds like a boy, tone rising slightly. “We can’t be together- like that. I… what I feel for you, is-,”

“Just say it,” Kamala says, scowling. “For God’s sake. Just say it, Adam. It’s not- I promise you, I can understand, I don’t expect- I thought you wanted to-,”

“I wanted you,” he says, almost a strangled rasp. “And it was selfish of me to act like I could have you, when that is not what’s best for either of us.”

“For either of us?” she echoes him in disbelief, then a surge of outrage. “Excuse me, who are you to decide what’s best for me?”

“You have no-,” he cuts himself off before they wind up shouting at each other, though she’d rather like to, it’s not as if there’s any nosy neighbors pressed up against the adjoining walls of her flat. “You don’t understand. You- it’s like you said, you’ve seen very little of life, and I know- I know it must seem like this is… like this is right, but just because we feel a certain way, doesn’t mean we should act on it-,”

She blinks, hard, to keep herself from bursting into tears, then says, in a low, almost threatening tone, “What do you feel, Adam?”

He clamps his mouth shut. The silence that passes is interminable. She can hear the chirp of a cricket outside. Kamala gives him another hard, searching look, then shakes her head minutely. They can’t do this. Not tonight. They can’t. She needs to go to bed. This is not going to grant her any absolution or satisfaction. He will argue them both into a black pit if she lets him carry on.

“Good night, Adam,” she mutters, and brushes past him. 

He grabs her arm, stopping her in her tracks. Kamala bites down hard on her lower lip, then turns on him, ready to really tear into him as she has not let herself since the very early days, when they’d only just met and she was convinced he was the most insufferable person she’d ever known. 

His mouth presses against hers, and for a few moments she kisses him back, pushing herself up onto her tiptoes, before she regains her senses and stops, her hands against his chest. He draws back, looking horrified. “I’m sorry, I didn’t- Kamala, I didn’t-,”

He’s never kissed her before. They didn’t kiss, last time, not on the mouth. She knows why, now, though she assumed it was just his preference at the time. 

“You did,” she says. 

He lets go of her and turns his face away, ashamed. She wonders what’s come over him, then wonders if this was why he was even quieter than usual on the drive up here, because he was trying to keep all this repressed and neatly filed away.

“No,” says Kamala fiercely. “We can either go into the bedroom and you can apologize for putting me through the wringer, making me feel like I- like I hurt you, like what we had was some dirty secret- or we can stop, right now, and talk about this after the mission’s over. Because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t just freeze me out, then let me back in only to bring this all up to the surface when you feel like it. I won’t do it. I won’t, Adam. You’re my friend and I want you to be happy but I am not going to walk back and forth over hot coals for the sake of your pride or- or your guilt- or whatever this is-,”

“Bedroom,” he says, as if she had a knife to his throat.

Kamala stares, yet again, can actually feel her eyebrows raising. He’s quite red but he doesn’t seem about to take it back. 

“Are you sure?” she asks, slowly.

He gives a jerky nod.

“If you’re sure, you need to be very sure, because last time you seemed very sure up until you’d gotten off, and then you wanted me out.” She didn’t mean it to sound quite so cold, coming from her, but she’s not going to take it back, either. Even if he was not the only one who ‘got off’. He made her feel like shit, afterwards. And then she feel like even more shit, for making him feel like shit. An endless cycle of shit. She couldn’t even tell Tina about it, so she was so distraught.

“Very sure,” he says, then, “It was never about that, it was- I’ll prove it to you.” Adam has always liked proving himself, mentally or physically, she supposes. Has always liked to set a challenge and then surpass it. 

“Alright,” she says, stifling a yawn, but feeling a frantic, pulsing warmth in her chest that has not been there for sometime. She slips her hand into his, tentative, then a little stronger when he looks at her so seriously, so determined. 

He leans down and very carefully presses a kiss to her forehead. She shivers, though it burns. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”

“I had better,” she’s closed her eyes the way she does when savoring a good meal, while his lips are on her temple. “I had better know. Promise me that.”

“I promise.” His other hand comes up, barely touching her face, hovering, really, and he leans further down to kiss her neck. She loses patience and loops her arms around his neck, so that when he straightens back up, he has to take her up with him. She presses her face against his sternum as he tucks his arms under her legs, one pressed against the back of her thigh, she feels it like a brand, and they both breathe in raggedly. 

He walks them into the bedroom, goes back to close the door, and by the time he’s turned around she has already shucked off her dress and pulled her hair down from its loose bun.

“Is this a mistake again?” she asks, challengingly. “For you? Because it’s not for me.”

“I don’t make the same mistakes twice.” 

She still feels he’s about to change his mind and stalk out, but he’s taking off his shoes. Every time he steps into her flat they have an argument over him taking off his shoes. The last time- the only time- they were together like this they were in his room, at the warehouse, and she remembers how he only kicked off his boots when she was already on top of him, and how she chuckled a little, hearing them hit the floor, though he wasn’t laughing.

“Good.” She clambers onto the bed, then scrambles over to grab her bag off her nightstand, almost upending it. Please let her still have one, please let her- aha. She’s got the condom unwrapped by the time he’s stripped out of his shirt and shorts. His pupils are very dilated and his skin is very pale aside from some ruddy burn on his forearms, the pale blonde hair of his arms standing out against it as if glowing. Kamala reaches over to turn out the lamp with her free hand. The last time it was pitch black, them being in his room and all, those dark curtains-

“You don’t have to,” he says. 

She stops, feeling the heat of the bulb inches from her fingers, then retracts her hand as he climbs onto the bed beside her. For a moment they stop moving much at all; she leans against him for a moment, wondering if this is really happening. “I don’t care if you’re selfish,” she says. “And I don’t care if you think this isn’t what’s best for me. I do care that it feels for you like it feels for me. Alright?”

He nods, after a moment, then says, slowly, painfully, “It feels like burning. Under my skin.”

Kamala offers him a slow, sad smile. “Good.”

They leave the light on.

**Author's Note:**

> This one shot was initially prompted on tumblr with the line 'Her beauty burned me unbearably' then mutated into this mess haha.
> 
> For context I seem to want to write weird backwards slow burn with Adam and Kamala, so this one shot takes place several months after Books 1 and 2, and about 2 months after Adam and Kamala had a very spontaneous hookup, which obviously ended badly for both of them, emotionally speaking. 
> 
> For Adam because he feels tremendous guilt and shame over letting Kamala get so close when he believes a relationship between them will inevitably end with her hurt, and even more guilt and shame over pushing her away, and for Kamala because she really does feel as though it's a constant cycle of hot and cold with him.
> 
> Clearly they've got a lot to sort out but I hoped you enjoyed the angsty dysfunction!
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/) where I post mostly about ASOIAF and HP, but also am always happy to chatter about my TWC OCs. I also accept prompts.


End file.
